Research Focus

Personal Statement

The broad mission of my research involves the development and application of bioinformatics/statistical methodologies for analyzing high-throughput 'omic' data. I also have deeply rooted interest in epigenetics and molecular epidemiology, specifically DNA methylation and its implications for human health and disease. Depending on the disease or condition being studied, its possible that only a small fraction of the molecular markers measured (i.e., CpG sites, genes, ect.) vary across subjects in any biologically meaningful way. My job is therefore to develop new and/or apply existing statistical methodologies for identifying these markers and to understand their functional role in the context of the disease under study. An appropriate analogy for this task is the age-old adage, "finding a needle in a haystack" - actually it is often like trying to find a needle in a barn full of haystacks! In addition to my methodological interests, which include, multivariate statistics, mixture models, and mixed-effects models, I am also passionate about my collaborations, which span from environmental health, the human microbiome, to a wide variety of different epigenetics studies. The shared theme across my collaborative research projects is the use of high-dimensional genomic data to gain further insight into some biological process.